Church seizure in Duliby: “Filaret” adherents bashed the young and the old (VIDEO)

On Sunday, June 26, in Duliby village, Hoshcha district, Rivne region, schismatics undertook another raiding of the Orthodox church, having broken into it at the beginning of the Divine Liturgy. The assault was led by Anatoliy Mironchuk, dean of Hoshcha district of the UOC of Kyiv Patriarchate together with his wife and sister Lesia Mironchuk – former village head. 

According to eye-witnesses, in the morning, as soon as the church senior priest Sergey Timofeyev entered the altar and pronounced the first intonement, local male radicals broke into the church and began pulling the faithful outside by their arms.

“I wanted to bar them from entering the Most Holy place, but they attacked me and beat me until I fell on the ground, they had no scruples even to kick me with their feet”, recounts Nikolay, one of the priest’s acolytes. 

Due to the insatiable desire of the KPists to pray the young man was heavily bruised all over his body and inflicted hematoma on his head.   

Still the UOC parishioners, who had been driven out of the church by the dissenters, still rose to the occasion and reported about the assault to the village head, who in his turn called the police. The law enforcement bodies responded immediately though did not interfere with the situation, standing by the church door entrance and in the street.  

An hour later the functionaries began to arrive at the Birth of Virgin church: heads of regional and district administrations, director of Hoshcha police unit. In Duliby village council power representatives initiated talks with participation of all parties to the conflict. The meeting did take place but not on parity basis as it had been stipulated before: at that moment KP priest Anatoliy Mironchuk came out of the barricaded church, while father Sergey Timofeyev  continued to serve Liturgy after the night vigil. Hence, the UOC’s clergy was not represented at talks.  

According to human rights activist of Rivne UOC diocese Yekaterina Ivaniuk, the discussion was purposeless, the only document being presented by the UOC-KP party was a recently registered statute of their religious community.

“Lesia Mironchuk tried to prove the head of Hoshcha district administration, SBU representative and UOC parishioners that by virtue of the statute they have all rights under the law to the religious structure. However, the civil servants pointed to her erroneous vision of the Ukrainian legal framework, the lawyer comments. – As regards the UOC religious community in the village, it has all necessary documents for the church, by virtue of which they have won already in courts”.

When the talks finished with no palpable solutions at hand, everybody made for the church. Having heard there the information from their representatives, the villagers began to scold each other. Most offended appeared the UOC priests who had come to assist from nearby parishes and the camera man – aggressive women from the Kiev Patriarchate tried to close and pull the camera out of his hands.

Late in the afternoon when protopriest Sergey Timofeyev finished the church service, the police started to let the parishioners out of the church. The first to come out was elderly woman Yevgeniya – she is 84 years old, she can hardly walk and found it difficult to go down the stairs. Not fighting back tears, the woman told what abuses she had experienced at such an old age.  

“I was beaten. Who can I harm? I’m so weak I can hardly handle myself. My heart shrinks when I realize my children (they are like children to me ‘cause I’ve known them since they were small) want to drive me away from the church and deny me of the only comfort in my life. Just think about it yourselves – what can make an old person happy? When Sunday comes, I go to the Holy Church and thank God for that”.   

The UOC parishioner Olga was also severely punished – her “kum” (the person who baptized her kid), UOC-KP dean Anatoliy Mironchuk bashed her. His fraternal love revealed as a big bruise on the woman’s arm.

Once the exit from the church was free, Olga and Nikolai were taken to Hoshcha district hospital to have battery-induced injuries verified. The police got the injured to give evidence, and a criminal proceeding was opened upon bashing.

About 5 p.m. the church in Duliby was closed by those who it belongs to under the law. True though, the owners had to change the lock core, since one of the aggressive members of the Kiev Patriarchate literally snatched the key, hid it in her bosom in public, and rushed into the police car. 

Currently law enforcers are on duty in the village, while the church is alarmed. On Wednesday, 29 June, representatives of the UOC and UOC KP are invited again to have a round table discussion of the conflict.

It is to be hoped the talks in Duliby will finish not like they did in the village of Krasnoselye of Hoshcha district. In January 2016 the schismatics seized the church there right during the negotiations in the District Administration. 

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